I am a girl.

I was a very late developing adolescent girl. Junior and high school were dark dark years for me, until I met Jesus at age 15. Finding out I was loved by Jesus changed my very identity.

Through God’s calling I became a woman pastor, early in the 1980s. I was a youth pastor for 39 years before I began pastoring my church, Larger Story Church, which has teens in mind in every decision we make. (Of course.)

Working with teens since 1981 meant I have decided to relive my adolescent years again and again in the girls I love. I get to feel their awkwardness and uncertainness again and again, which reminds me of those terrible years I lived.

I love teen girls. Currently my three granddaughters are all teens. I wish they would never age out of adolescence! They feel differently about that and thankfully we have the relationship that they tell me that. I enjoy them so much. I want the best for all of our teen girls.

The world is cruel to teen girls. This is why I write this series. I have some things to say.

_______________________________________________________

By now we all know that social media harms teens, and especially girls. We our watching our teens become zombified. Just as a reminder about what the great amount of research is teaching us, this is from Jonathan Haidt, the lead revealer of this truth, and it’s all about our girls:

In Chapter 6 of The Anxious Generation, we examined the connections between social media use and adolescent mental illness, with a focus on depression and anxiety. We outlined six reasons why social media harms girls more than boys: (1) girls spend more time on visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok; (2) they have a heightened vulnerability to visual social comparisons; (3) relational aggression is more prevalent among girls; (4) girls face greater pressures toward perfectionism; (5) they are more susceptible to the interpersonal spread of emotion; and (6) they encounter an increased risk of sexual harassment and online predation.

1 in 3 teen girls that using Instagram leaves them feeling worse about their bodies. It’s not just being on Instagram, it is also being in Instagram. Recommendation algorithms may systematically direct vulnerable individuals searching for weight loss or fitness advice toward more extreme content promoting dangerous dieting and excessive exercise. Beyond static advice, users encounter online communities or influencers who reframe eating disorders as aesthetic lifestyle choices rather than the serious medical conditions they are. Pro-ED communities use shared language, insider knowledge, and emotional reinforcement to deepen commitment to harmful behaviors and delay recovery. Source:  https://www.afterbabel.com/p/eating-disorders-social-media

I’ll add this new statistic which was also released by Jonathan Haidt:

One of the fastest-growing dangers facing young people online is sexual extortion. Unredacted lawsuits from Snapchat reveal that the company receives roughly 10,000 reports of sextortion every month, a figure that their researchers say represents only a fraction of the abuse occurring on their platform. Other platforms face similar problems. None have been able to contain it. Source:   https://www.afterbabel.com/p/growing-up-online-nearly-killed-me

Yikes! 10,000 reports of sextortion every month and it is not containable. Social media harms. 

In more recently unsealed court documents, Meta maintained a 17-strike policy for sex trafficking accounts. This policy was to remove predators only after they were caught attempting to traffic people 17 separate times. 17. Separate. Times. Source:  https://www.afterbabel.com/p/how-metas-lawyers-perfected-the-playbook

Such egregious behavior is not limited to only Meta. It will be a matter of time before judicious lawyers will reveal all.

When you give your teen girl a smartphone, you are giving her technology that never forgets anything. Every photo, message, and search can be stored, shared, or resurfaced long after the moment has passed. That means one impulsive decision can follow her into future relationships, opportunities, and even how she sees herself.

When your daughter creates a social media profile, she is being asked to brand herself—before she even knows who she is. Instead of identity forming slowly through real relationships, failure, growth, and discovery, she’s subtly pushed to define herself in a few curated images, captions, and metrics that reward performance over authenticity. The pressure to be liked, followed, and affirmed can begin shaping her choices, not around what is true or good, but around what is visible and approved. In that process, the formation of who she is becoming is quietly influenced—if not outsourced—to business who generate profit. These businesses are making lots of money off of your daughter. 

The struggle is, as a parent, how do you protect your teen girl “when everyone has a phone.” The struggle is real. I have no easy answers. Some attempts are:

• Let fear and love help lead you in this decision.

• Do better with your own screen use. This is in your control.

• Be someone, one of the rare someones, who is telling our teen girls it is okay to turn off your screen. Take them to locations that expect them to turn off their screens. 

• And nostalgia. This is a little story also written by Jonathan Haidt. It brings up nostalgia in me and I wish this for every teen girl. It was rare (honestly) when another girl in my class would invite me into a conversation during those end moments of class or even during class (the thrill of being a disruptor!) but I felt wanted in those moments. It is in those random off moments that can make or break the high school experience. Social media is stealing the experience to save our girls in those vulnerable moments of being seen and needing a tampon.

“Last week, a high school junior named Cassie pulled her phone out of her classroom’s ‘phone hotel’ (a fabric shoe rack) at the end of her biology class. As she meandered through the hallway to the bathroom and study hall, she toggled through her phone quickly, catching up on a group text chain with some girls in her grade, a smaller group exchange with her tennis teammates, and a private back-and-forth with her mom. She scrolled through TikTok, checked the weather forecast for the next day, and checked in on her crush’s Instagram account to see if he’d posted anything new (he had!).

“In Cassie’s case, she’d connected with her friends, touched base with her mom, daydreamed about her crush, and thought ahead about tomorrow’s weather. That’s all pretty great. I’ve witnessed many positive moments with my kids on devices, too, like the time my toddler asked his Amazon Alexa why the tooth fairy is nocturnal (adorable), the time my elementary schooler asked ChatGPT what his grandparents might want to talk about (great topic prep for their next conversation), or the time I heard my daughter giggling with her cousin on their Gizmo watches (a sweet experience that’s now part of their shared reality).

“But here’s the problem: the costs of device use aren’t just about what kids experience and absorb. It’s also about what they miss. In those five minutes in Cassie’s life, she didn’t:

• • • Turn to her classmates to debrief about their biology class (so she didn’t realize how entropy and enthalpy are different);
    • Hear younger students talking to each other in the hallway (so she didn’t learn that one of her older friends had hurt their feelings);
    • Say hi to her math teacher when he passed by (which he took as a sign of a mild disinterest in their math work together);
    • Wave to her friend (because she didn’t see him ahead of her down the hall);
    • Make brief eye contact and then avert her eyes away from her crush (which she believed is something a cute girl might do to catch his attention);
    • Offer to give a tampon to a quiet girl in the bathroom (because she didn’t notice the girl was looking for one).

“While engrossed in her digital reality, Cassie missed out on the rewards of the in-person social world––from silly and fleeting to substantive and profound––that were available all around her.” –Jonathan Haidt, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/conversations-kids-are-missing

The research is there. I’m still freaked over the sextortion numbers. But these misses of learning someone’s body language, a practice at flirting, noticing someone to be kind bother me the most. These are life skills to navigate people the rest of your life.

For the love of girls. We learn. We pray. We do something.

p.s. Read this interview with the lawyers who won the case against Meta and Google arguing these businesses had endangered a young woman by knowingly creating addictive features in their platforms.